Entrepreneur Martine Rothblatt to Deliver UCLA School of Law Commencement Address

March 5, 2015 – EntrepreneurandUCLA School of Law alumna Martine Rothblatt ’81, chairman and CEO of United Therapeutics Corporation, will deliver the Commencement address at UCLA School of Law’s 64th Commencement ceremony on Friday, May 15, 2015 in Dickson Court North on the UCLA campus.

Rothblatt founded United Therapeutics Corporation, a major U.S. public biotech company that focuses on the development and commercialization of unique products to address the unmet medical needs of patients with chronic and life-threatening conditions, in 1996. Prior to starting United Therapeutics, she founded and served as chairman and CEO of Sirius Satellite Radio (now Sirius XM).

Upon graduation with a joint J.D./M.B.A. degree from UCLA, she practiced law in Washington, D.C. Her legal practice focused initially on satellite communications law. Later, her practice focused on developing the legal cases for equal marital rights, summarized in her LGBT best-selling book, The Apartheid of Sex, (Crown, 1995), and for freedom from genetic and reproductive discrimination. The latter work led to her leading the International Bar Association’s effort to present a Human Genome Treaty to the United Nations and to the publication of her book Unzipped Genes (Temple University Press, 1999). Rothblatt’s current research is focused on the possibility of technological immortality and in the extension of her work in human rights law to cyberconsciousness, which is summarized in Virtually Human: The Promise—and the Peril—of Digital Immortality (St. Martin’s Press, Sept. 2014). Rothblatt recently discussed Virtually Human during a public Regents Lecture at UCLA School of Law in October 2014. She also holds a Ph.D. in Medical Ethics from the University of London.